Fat Brain

Besides having a great name you gotta love, FatBrain.com not only gives you an opportunity to market yourself and your site, but to also GET PAID for doing so at the same time! All you writers out there, pay attention!

FatBrain is an online bookstore specializing in professional books, interactive training, and certification. They also have a unique offering called “eMatter“. Here’s where the fun begins.

eMatter publishes and sells digital documents, ranging from single articles to whole books. As they describe it, “eMatter lets people all over the world find, purchase, download and print unique content with the click of a mouse.”

The really cool thing is that eMatter builds its “store” with content it gets from you and me….and pays you 50% of its royalties ! If you’re like me and constantly writing and placing content to gain publicity, getting paid for such effort is a wonderful notion! Besides which, FatBrain does a fabulous job of promoting itself, too, so you can benefit from their own exposure.

Here’s how eMatter works:

(1) If you think you have original content worth publishing, go to eMatter and click on “Authors Only.” There, you can read a detailed explanation of how eMatter works. eMatter’s subjects go far beyond the range of simply “professional books and interactive training.” They’ve got such categories as Cookbooks, Fiction & Literature, and Pets – something for everybody!

(2) Registered authors can upload documents to eMatter in either PDF, DOC, PS or TEXT formats. For publishing purposes, eMatter will convert all files into PDF format. As for copyright ownership and editorial control, you retain all rights.

(3) Set your price – eMatter has minimum pricing levels per size of document, but they are extremely reasonable (bottomline minimum = $2.00 per document).

(4) Once you’ve submitted a document, eMatter will review it to see if they consider it worth publishing. If they do, you’re on the way! (If you want to see yours truly’s latest eMatter publication, click here.)

FatBrain’s own marketing efforts range from affiliate programs, whereby you make commissions as well as increase your royalty percentages, to email reminders (I recently received an email in which I was told that I was receiving a free T-shirt, but which also contained other information about FatBrain that served as a subtle reminder to both buy and sell through FatBrain). They also offer a corporate accounts program for businesses that want to take advantage of FatBrain’s materials.

And most importantly, FatBrain makes it very easy to get help. It publishes its toll-free contact number and customer service email on every page. There’s no guessing here.

I guess the best thing about my FatBrain eMatter experience was that it was fun. How often can you say that about a business transaction, especially on the ‘Net?

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